


Everything Wrong, and Nowhere to Go

by Punka_Writes



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt No Comfort, Found Family, Friendship, I am fundamentally broken as a person, Missing Scene, Thacker came back wrong and it's killing all of them, offhand mention of Mama/Barclay and Barclay/Stern, the OG Pine Guard Angst nobody asked for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-27
Updated: 2020-01-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:14:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22439344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Punka_Writes/pseuds/Punka_Writes
Summary: Mama brought Thacker back, sort of. Now her and Barclay have to live with that.Set during the third arc, sometime before Duck brings Billy back to the Lodge.
Relationships: Barclay & Mama & Thacker (The Adventure Zone)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 13





	Everything Wrong, and Nowhere to Go

A long time ago, Barclay lived at the edge of a beautiful city surrounded by walls. The walls held back a terrible desolation. Like any child of the walled city, Barclay learned one lesson early and well: nothing that leaves the city comes back alive, not really, not even if it walks back in on its own two feet.

The wasteland eats their hearts, his mother told him. The wasteland hollows them out and sends them back hungry, and nothing of what they were will ever return.

He remembers his mother's words whenever he looks at the thing that used to be Thacker, with its haunted eyes and its hands like claws: the wasteland hollows them out and sends them back hungry.

The wasted, battered body wearing Thacker's face doesn't speak. It won't or can't meet anyone's eyes, and when it does look in Barclay's direction there's no recognition there. 

But it breathes and it eats, so Barclay feeds it. Three times a day, same as anyone else at the Lodge. He toasts bread and scrambles eggs, slices bananas and heats oatmeal. Three times a day he carries a tray down the stairs to the cellar, where he slides it under the barrier the Enchanter made to keep the feral human contained. As often as not he finds Mama down there already, slouched against the wall with her bad leg stretched out in front of her, watching through the barrier for any sign of recognition from the creature she almost died bringing back.

Tonight’s no different. Mama’s nowhere to be found around the Lodge, which means she’s most likely downstairs again. Barclay bites back his frustration as he preps the food, checks to make sure the oatmeal won’t be hot enough to burn by the time he gets it down to the cellar. Then he washes his hands, sweeps up the last few crumbs so he’s not leaving a dirty workspace, and picks up the tray. 

Barclay’s stopped himself half a dozen times from bringing down other food, buckwheat pancakes and bacon or venison stew or that godawful fucking gorp. Food he made for his friend years ago. Food that's too rich for the wasted body of the thing that's living in the basement. Flavors the thing that used to be Thacker would maybe remember and maybe enjoy. 

But he doesn't follow through on that impulse. The food he brings down every day is basic; easy on the system, easy to clean up after. No utensils, for safety’s sake, but Thacker — the ghost of Thacker — doesn’t use them anyway. He eats like an animal, hunched over the food like he thinks one of them is going to take it away and licking the remnants off his hands when he’s done.

It breaks Barclay's goddamned heart to watch. He remembers so many meals shared with Arlo Thacker, his easy drawl, his grin over the rim of a coffee mug. He's had six years of getting used to the dull ache of losing a friend and now . . .

Now his friend is still lost. Nothing about the thing in the basement reminds him of Thacker, except the face. 

Except the eyes.

Except the way Mama says _Thacker_ like the name means anything to the shell of a wild thing that came back.

Barclay shoulders the back door of the Lodge open and skirts the edge of the building, boots crunching on the scattered crusts of stale snow across the path. He got out here earlier with the shovel and some gravel, and hopes it’s enough to give Mama a good enough footing with her ankle still in a cast. He’d rather she’d actually rest instead of constantly making her way down to hover around the perimeter of the net that keeps their unwilling guest docile, but he knows more than to expect that of her. 

If there's one thing Barclay's always loved about Madeline Cobb, it's her cornered-badger tenacity, how she'll sink her teeth into the smallest scrap of hope and hold onto it no matter how hard the world tries to shake her loose. Sometimes he wishes he had that same ability, that he could find that scrap of hope. 

Not right now, though. Right now all he wants to do is be able to forget that while he’s packing a lunch for Jake or visiting with Stern or prepping supper for the lodge there’s a monster just below his feet.

What he wants is for Mama to take care of herself, for _once_ , instead of sitting vigil over someone who almost killed her, someone who doesn’t know her, someone who will never, ever know her again. 

He wants to get through this day and tomorrow and however many days remain between now and whenever the monster in the basement gets loose and hurts someone, or stops eating and wastes away, or contracts some illness its frail human body can’t successfully fight off.

He wants to live in a world where a thing wearing his dead best friend’s face isn’t trapped in his basement. Where Barclay and the person he loves best don't have to go through the grotesque motions of losing Arlo Thacker a second time. 

But he doesn't live in that kind of world. He lives here, now, and so he sighs and squares his shoulders and carries the tray down the badly-lit stairs into the cellar.

***

It’s hard to keep track of time in the cellar. The few windows are narrow, high up along the ceiling, and buried deep in the snow piled around the Lodge. The only light that seeps through during the day is a dim, washed-out half light. It’s not hard to lose track of time when it fades, leaving only the glow from the dusty old fluorescent fixtures. 

She should replace the battery in the wall clock, maybe. Or she should have Barclay replace it, since reaching it would involve getting a stepladder and climbing up to retrieve the clock. She could do it, but Barclay’d be furious if he found out she was doing that kind of thing with her cast on. 

If it were up to Barclay she’d be doing a whole lot of nothing. Just sitting in a soft chair by the fire, nursing a cup of tea with her ankle up. It ain’t that it doesn’t sound good, don’t get her wrong. It’s just that she was away too long to ignore her responsibilities now she’s come back. That ain’t fair to the kids or the Pine Guard or Barclay himself. That ain’t fair to Thacker.

Not that she’s real sure Thacker can discern the difference between her keeping him company or not. Sometimes he stirs or snarls when she says his name, but just as often he doesn’t look up, just huddles there staring at the floor until it’s time to eat or he falls asleep upright. 

It’s heartbreaking, watching him. But it’s worse going about her business upstairs pretending he’s not a prisoner down here, so who can blame her if she keeps finding herself down here with him?

The door at the top of the stairs opens and she shakes herself out of a half-doze. Damn it, she used to be a lot better at staying alert when she was on watch. Barclay’s feet echo on the old stairs, and if it’s possible for footsteps to sound tired, his do. He barely gives her a nod when he steps into the room, and she doesn’t miss the way his eyes flick to her cast and then to the way she’s sitting — on the floor, back to the wall, bad leg stretched out in front of her. 

“I know,” she says before he can say anything, “I oughta be on the couch, at least.”

The couch in question is old and ratty, the seat springs all shot to hell and back, and last time she sat in it she had trouble getting herself back up out of it, but she’s not going to tell Barclay that. She doesn’t want him to worry more than he already does. 

He sighs in response and slides the dinner tray in his hands under the edge of the net that keeps Thacker contained. 

Thacker barely moves. Maybe an eyebrow twitches. Maybe it’s just a trick of the light. 

Mama pulls her knees up to her chest, being careful with the bad ankle. She wishes Barclay’d say something. She wants to ask him for a hand getting to her feet, ask him if he’ll be pacified if she spends the rest of the evening by the fire with her leg up, ask him if he wants to go to bed early with her and forget the rest of the Lodge exists for a couple of hours. 

She doesn’t end up saying anything except, “Clock needs a new battery.”

Barclay squints up at it, the hands long frozen behind cracked and yellowed plastic. He’s got dark circles under his eyes. Mama supposes she probably does, too. 

“Okay,” he says finally. “I’ll take care of it.” 

Of course he will. She can count on him for that; he takes care of things. Things and people.

“Are you going to come upstairs and have something to eat?” Barclay’s trying too hard to sound nonjudgmental and it ends up sounding flat, lifeless. 

Mama sighs and flicks her gaze over to Thacker, who hasn’t moved. “Yeah. Soon’s Thacker finishes his supper. I’ll bring the tray.” 

Barclay wants to argue, she can tell it from the line of his shoulders, but he doesn’t. He just nods and turns around, heads back towards the stairs. 

She knows this is killing him just as much as it is her. Knows he’d rather Thacker was dead than . . . whatever this is. Sometimes there’s something almost like an apology hovering on her lips, but she can’t be sorry that she didn’t leave Thacker to suffer alone in Sylvain.

“It’s not really him,” Barclay says, hushed and reluctant, foot on the bottom step, so quiet she’d almost be able to believe she imagined it.

She didn’t, though. Barclay turns and stands there framed by the stairwell, hunching his shoulders. “You know that, right?”

The words punch a hole in her chest and let all the air out of her lungs. It’s been hovering in the air between the two of them since the minute Barclay realized where she’d been all those weeks, but it hurts more to hear it out loud than she expected it to. 

Mama’s stomach clenches, and she tightens her fingers on her knees, watching the skin of her knuckles whiten against her jeans. She doesn’t reply. Barclay waits for a long while, just standing there watching her, and she sighs. 

He’s always been more patient than she is. Him and Thacker have that in common.

Had. 

“I know you don’t want to hear it,” Barclay says finally. “But it’s not really Thacker anymore, Mama. It just isn’t.”

"And what do you want me to do about that, Barclay?” She rolls her head back against the cracked plaster of the wall behind her, gives him a flat look that doesn’t match the knot of emotion in her guts. “You want me to put him down like the goddamned Yearling?”

Barclay flinches and looks away. She knew he would, she intended it to happen, wanted to throw him off balance, but it doesn’t give her any satisfaction. 

She’s so goddamned tired.

“You know that’s not what I’m saying.” Barclay won’t look at her now. He’s got his arms folded across his chest, the wrist where he wears his bracelet tucked between his bicep and his body, protected. 

“Mama,” he adds, and he sounds just as weary as she feels, just as sad, and ain’t they a pair, sitting here in the wreckage of their cellar with all this grief strung between them. “All I’m saying is keeping him down here is dangerous.” 

Like she don’t know that. Like she didn’t damned near _die_ dragging Thacker back out from Sylvain. Something flares in her chest, sharp and hot and sudden as the crack of a pine log burning.

“So’s gettin’ cozy with the goddamned law, _Barclay_ ,” she says acidly.

Barclay’s head jerks up and he stares at her for a long silent moment, the muscles in his jaw working, his big brown doe eyes gone hooded and hard.

Oh, she wishes he’d get angry. He won’t, that ain’t Barclay’s way, but she wishes he would. She wishes he’d get thundering mad so she could get mad in return, so she could spit and scream like a wildcat and forget the lump of sorrow that’s got a stranglehold on her chest. Mad’s always been so much easier for her to bear up under than sad is. 

Barclay knows her too well, is the problem, knows she’s itchin’ to pick a fight, and he doesn’t rise to it. He just looks _hurt_. Like all the worry she caused him running off and all the grief she’s caused him bringing Thacker here wasn’t bad enough. 

Half of her wants to apologize. The other half’s too tired to deal with the dam of feelings apologizing will crack open in her chest, and tired wins. She looks away, watches Thacker rocking back and forth staring at nothing, and pulls her knees tighter against her chest and pretends her heart isn’t twisting in on itself like a wounded animal looking to hide where it hurts. 

Barclay huffs out a breath. 

“Okay,” he says, his voice gone tight and quiet. “You know where to find me.”

Mama doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t see as how there’s anything she can say to make any of this better. Barclay’s footsteps fall hollow on the stairs, and the door opens and closes behind him, and she’s alone again with what’s left of Arlo Thacker.

She closes her eyes and leans back against the wall, listens to Thacker shift position and scrabble over to the tray, the awful feral noise of him eating.

She’s just so goddamned tired.

***

He’s hungry. 

The Quell doesn’t quite understand hungry. The Quell understands anger, decay, destruction, revenge, control, furylossdeathdestructionrevengeemptinessanger on an endless maelstrom loop. The Quell only lets him eat because it’s watched him weaken when he doesn’t, because it needs him to stay alive. 

It needs him to escape. To return to Sylvain, to the place where he found it, so it can return to its work.

At first, when he fell into the eye of the storm, he expected to die. Six years in the wasteland he’d managed to survive, but the beating crimson heart of the Quell was far worse than the wasteland. Thacker fell into blackness expecting he’d never wake again. 

But he did. He woke, but he didn’t open his eyes; the Quell did that. He didn’t raise his head or look up at the giant figure of the Enchanter with its golden eyes glowing in the darkness; the Quell did that. He didn’t thrash and claw and kick like a wild, dangerous thing, sinking his teeth into whatever he could get at; the Quell did that.

Thacker was just along for the ride, beating uselessly against the Quell's hold on him like a trapped firefly banging around inside a bottle. Screaming with all his might and not making a single sound.

He didn't mean to call Maddie with his cries but he thinks he must have. He can't fathom how else she would've known to come find him there, pinned under the Enchanter's net, starving and gnashing his teeth like a cornered wildcat. The Quell looked at her out of his eyes as she stepped out of the shadows, and its hatred boiled up into a snarl even as his heart shattered into a billion pieces. He was so fuckin’ grateful to see her face but he hated that she was there, and he tried to wrestle enough control to use his voice to say _No, Maddie, run, get out of here, it’s dangerous._

He couldn’t do it. He wasn’t strong enough to match the Quell. He’s only one old fool and the Quell is the size of the universe, an endless sea of fury and hate. He couldn’t warn Maddie, couldn’t respond when she called his name, couldn’t do anything to stop the Quell from fighting her every goddamned step she took from the Enchanter’s lair to the gate to the Lodge.

Thacker doesn’t know how long it took her to get them here. He remembers bits and pieces — it’s hard to keep memories straight through the cloud of red hatred that poisons his every waking moment. He remembers the Quell urging _break tear hurt kill_ and he wants to retch wondering what would have happened had the net the Enchanter wove been even a tiny bit weaker.

It was bad enough the way it happened. Thacker remembers his fists and feet landing blow after blow, his nails raking against the familiar leather of her coat. He remembers his teeth meeting in the skin of her wrist, the taste of copper and salt. The sick snap her ankle made when his heel shot out and caught her just as she fastened the net around the kitchenette in the place that used to be his second home. 

He hurt her. The Quell hurt her but it used him to do it, her blood is still dried under his torn, ragged nails. He’d bite them off if he could raise his hands to do it, but he can’t. The Quell won’t let him. 

Maddie spends too much time down here, sitting watch with him. He wants to tell her she needs to stay away, that he’s not safe to be around if anything happens to that net, that he’ll hurt her again if he gets the chance, but he can’t. He’s not allowed to. 

The Quell raged and thrashed for a week after Maddie got him down into the cellar, and then it decided to wait for an opening. Since then it does nothing but sit and stare at the floor through Thacker’s eyes, nursing its hatred, biding its time. When there’s food it lets go of him enough for him to eat. Sometimes it lets him lay down to fall asleep. It won’t let him do anything else.

Barclay’s here now, too. The sound of his voice, the soft bass rumble Thacker knows like his own heartbeat, sends the Quell in his head into a fit of black, bitter hatred. The Quell hates everything that isn’t _Her_ , but it hates the Sylphs more than anything else. The Quell’s going to tear Barclay’s throat out with Thacker’s teeth the minute it gets the chance.

They’re talking about him. Thacker’s surprised it took them this long. In the old days the Pine Guard would’ve tackled a problem this big the minute it reared its head.

Of course _he_ was never the problem, in the old days.

“It’s not really him,” Barclay says, and Thacker can’t make a sound but he _feels_ the sound he would make if he could, a raw heartbroken sob that churns in his chest. Barclay’s not wrong but he’s not exactly right, either. 

Thacker’s an animal. Thacker is himself. Thacker is a danger, to Mama, to Barclay, to everyone at the Lodge. Thacker’s an old, broken man with six years’ worth of lonely worn into his bones. 

Thacker’s a monster. All three of them know it. Mama kicks back at Barclay when he says it out loud, and Thacker hates how much hurt is in her voice. He hates how she does what she always used to do, gets sharp when she’s cornered, and he wishes he could put his hands over his ears and block out the rest of this conversation. 

He hates that this is how it happened, that after all that lost time he made it home just to hurt them, just to carry this ticking bomb of hatred into the place that was meant to be safe. 

Barclay’s steps retreat up the cellar stairs and the door at the top bangs shut. Thacker feels the stranglehold the Quell has on his body let loose, arms and legs under enough of his own control for him to move them. 

He doesn’t feel like eating anymore, but if he doesn’t do it the Quell’s just going to take hold again and make him do it, so he crawls over to the tray and lifts the food mechanically to his mouth, eating with his hands, flexing his fingers a little to try and get some of the stiffness out before the Quell takes them away again. 

He can hear Maddie behind him, against the wall, safely out of reach. She’s crying and trying not to, soft little sniffling sobs that cut themselves off in choked, broken noises. Thacker wants to cry, too. He wants to crawl over to the edge of the kitchenette and reach for her, hold her hands, touch her hair. He knows if he did that the Quell would try and kill her just to spite him. 

He wishes he could at least talk to her. _You’re both right._ He wants to say. _It’s me and it isn’t. I'm here, it's me, but the other thing is here with me, too, and it hates you and I can’t do anything to stop it. I tried._

Thacker takes a deep breath and tries with all his might to push anything past the Quell’s hold on his throat. He tries. All that comes out is a hoarse, toneless noise. 

Maddie shifts abruptly. “Thacker?” 

_Yeah. Yes. It’s me and I'm here and I never meant to hurt you, Maddie. I’m so, so sorry._ But nothing happens this time, not even noise. 

She waits for a long time before she sighs and gets ponderously to her feet. She hooks the tray back out from under the net and Thacker tries to look up, to at least get a look at her face, but the Quell’s done letting him do things for today. 

He hears her go up the stairs, hobbling on the ankle he broke. The door closes, and Thacker . . . 

Thacker sits in the middle of the floor and pulls his knees up to his chest, staring at the floor. 

He doesn’t have any other choice.


End file.
